Sherburne County Heritage Center Interpretive Plan Final Report 2005

Home Browse Search

landscape changed over time. Benches and/or railings alongside the pathway provide a place to rest while watching this 5-10 minute experience. When visitors exit the short ice tunnel, they will see a raised relief map of Sherburne County that depicts the landscape the ice sheets left behind. Particular glacial features will be identified by name on the relief map, such as the Anoka Sandplain, river terraces, kettle lakes and tamarack bogs, and sand dunes. Waist -high interpretive panels will provide brief information about each feature, using maps and illustrations extensively. Each small panel will focus on a different feature, illustrating them with contemporary photographs, and then pose a question about that feature, with a number of answers. Visitors will lift up a hinged lid to find the correct answer. [Additional research should be conducted to tie local landscape features to glacial history, such as Blue Hill, Santiago's 1,000 islands, Elk River's hills, East St. Cloud's granite.] Above a small chest of drawers, a map indicates the locations of different sand and gravel pits in the county. Visitors will inspect a small chest of drawers containing photos of different gravel and sand pits in the county corresponding to their locations on the map. Samples of the contents of those pits will be in the drawers. Finger holes in Plexiglas covered drawers will allow people to touch the contents but not remove any. Differing Points of View None anticipated. Iconic object/media/activities The iconic objects in this section are the glacial entrance tunnel and raised relief map. Additional media and activities to tell the story (objects, film, images, sound, etc.) 1. Photos of glacial features 2. Maps of glacial activity in area, such as Wovcha, p. 5, etc. 3. What is sand, how is it formed, moved about? (View sand under a microscope. Have a series of questions about sand that require people to interact with the exhibit. This could again be a series of hinged flaps; questions on the flaps, and answers underneath it. Sand particles that are angular suggest they have broken off from the parent rock relatively recently and not been eroded much, while round grains of sand have been transported for quite a distance in water and have had their rough edges ground down.) 4. Create a small chest with drawers that contain samples of sand and gravel from the county's sand and gravel pits. A photo of each sand or gravel pit can be displayed next to the sample. The point here is that the color, composition, and size and shape of sand and gravel may vary from place to place. For example, river terrace sand particles are larger than sand particles in a sand dune or from the Superior lobe till near Elk River. A video monitor that shows gravel and sand excavation activities in area would be useful here, too. 5. We would need several graphics of glacial activity in this section to demonstrate how different county features were created. Sherburne County Historical Society Heritage Center Interpretive Plan, April 21, 2005, page 26